Truth and Lies
by Dr Laura De Giorgio

The secret of creating anything intentionally with hypnosis (or with prayer) consists of " acting as if" - experiencing that which you desire to be, have or do in your outer world - as if it were real for you now in your subjective reality - in your imagination, in your emotions, in your inner experience, in your inner world.

You can find numerous techniques, methods and tools designed to help you in this respect, but the core of your ability to create anything with your mind is based upon your willingness to pretend that what you desire to experience in your outer reality is real for you now in your inner world.

That is what hypnosis is all about - playing the game of pretending really well.

Some people - a lot of people, as a matter of fact - will say, "Wait a minute! If I say to myself that I have something when I really don't have it in my experience, aren't I  lying to myself?" Or, "Won't my subconscious then interpret that I already have this thing, and so stop working on bringing it into my life?"

The answer to both questions is "No" . It will help you a great deal if you shift the way you look at and think about the world, and if you adopt the world-view that your outer experience is only a mirror reflection of your inner experience. Your outer experience is much like a shadow on the wall, a projection that emanates from your mind and emotions.

If you choose to look at that shadow and say that it is real for you, you will in effect give it power over your life and you will then feel powerless to do much about it. If you choose to look upon it as an "effect" of the cause that is set in motion by your thoughts and emotions, then if you don't like that experience, you will know that you have the power to change it by changing your thoughts and emotions, and so you will find it easy to change it.

Whether the situation you desire to change changes overnight or takes a period  of time to change will depend on how willing you are to let go of the past and of the world of effects. This is the whole point of the "depth" in hypnosis - cutting yourself from all perception and contemplation of the " problem" experiences in your mind and emotions and being able to fully focus, both  mentally and emotionally, to fully experience your desired outcome as real for you now. This "depth" doesn't mean that you have to go into a state where you are almost unconscious, but is rather a state of mind in which the only experience that exists for you in your thoughts and emotions is the outcome you desire. At least, for the time being - it is then your ONLY reality.

Someone wrote a book on developing faith and called it appropriately "If You Want to Walk on Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat!" It is just another way of saying - you have to be willing to wholeheartedly embrace and surrender to the unknown, without holding back to that which feels safer because it is familiar to you. People often have a long list of things they would like to accomplish or become, but they just don't have the guts to completely let go of the past and plunge themselves into this new adventure as if there were no other possibility. Instead of holding onto that which they desire to experience with all their minds and hearts, they begin to contemplate all the reasons why they can't really have it, or whether it may or may not work out. Then they begin comparing the possibility of this new experience to their past experiences, and thinking of people they may know who  attempted that same thing and never made it.

You'll get nowhere fast that way.

If you don't like your current condition, you can even pretend that you have shifted into another (parallel) reality, into a new life-stream, where if you have to have a different past - a past that that is empowering you and where what you desire to accomplish is easy and natural for you to do. Whatever you do, just drop investing mental and emotional energy into ruminating over and savoring the experiences from the past you would rather forget, unless you desire to experience more of the same in the future.

Whatever you experienced in the past is not real now, but you still have the option to contemplate it and drag it into the future by constantly entertaining in in your mind and emotions. And if you choose to do that, keep in mind that your thoughts and emotions have creative power and each moment they are weaving a fabric of your future experiences.

When you look around yourself at anything that is present in your physical world - it already belongs to the past, because you have already created it.   If you like it, savor it to your heart's content - but if you don't like it, fill your mind and heart with the thoughts and emotions you'd rather experience.

When you begin to change - in consciousness and in your mind and emotions - for a little while longer the effects from your past thoughts and emotions, from your past programming in your subconscious mind, may still linger on in your outer experience. When you notice those experiences, just acknowledge that they belong to the past, that they are an effect of your past thoughts and they don't belong to your present.

Realize that right now, with the thoughts and emotions you choose to entertain today, throughout the day, and tomorrow, you are creating new conditions in your life -  conditions that you'd like to experience. With each thought you think today your are planting seeds of the experiences you are going to savor in the future, and that future may be the very next moment.

When you begin to change, the change may feel a little bit uncomfortable for a while, it may feel unnatural or as if it were not really you - as if  you are just faking it all, or maybe it is just a fluke of luck. This is normal. After all, you are experiencing something new, something unfamiliar, something that you have maybe never experienced before. You may be tempted to begin even sliding backwards toward your previous comfort zone, where everything felt familiar. Your thoughts may spontaneously begin to shift back to what you were accustomed to think before, so it is important to keep vigilant and to hold onto the desired experience in your mind and emotions until it becomes your new comfort zone.

This holding onto your desired experience in your thoughts and emotions does not involve any struggle and straining. It merely involves gently bringing your attention, your focus and your emotions to your desired experience whenever you notice they have strayed away. When you are struggling and straining, you are in a way saying to yourself that what you desire is far away or hard to get and in that way you are just making it more difficult for yourself. It is not about struggling and straining, but rather about joyfully surrendering mentally and emotionally to desired experience in your mind and emotions - just the way children play their favorite games of pretending.

It is also not about wishing and hoping, but about experiencing and knowing. When you wish for something, you are saying that you don't have it (in your emotions) and consequently your subconscious mind will take that as meaning you want to remain in and keep on experiencing the state of just wishing for it forever. When you allow yourself experience your desired outcome in your emotions as if it were real for you now, you are claiming it, you are acknowledging it, you are saying to your subconscious mind - " yes, this is what I desire" . Your subconscious mind simply interprets everything that feels real to you now - as if that were what you actually want to experience more of in your life.

And the fastest way to move on from the stages of wishing, wanting and hoping to having what you desire to experience is by practicing gratitude - by expressing gratitude for that which you desire - as if it were already yours. When you express gratitude for something, by the act of heartfelt gratitude you have accepted it as yours, you have given yourself permission to have it and you have opened the way for it to come into your life.

And no, your subconscious will not stop working on your goal if you experience something as already yours because your subconscious is perpetually expressing for you, projecting into your outer world as your experiences, that which feels real to you now - your predominant thoughts and emotions.

© 2006 Dr Laura De Giorgio. www.deeptrancenow.com.